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The ugly plumbing thread!


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I usually take some pride in my plumbing and its appearance, but my latest effort is by far the ugliest effort yet. I feel like I should take myself out back and shoot myself.

 

I was trying to combine the 2 1" bulkheads from my overflow box into a single 1.5" pipe because I need a single pipe to plug into my tidepool sump. I wanted to use hose barbs, but just couldn't get the parts. So I use PVC.

 

Notice how the spacing of the bulkheads is *JUST* too far apart to go straight into the wye fitting...so I had to use short runs of spa flex there. If those bulkheads were 1/4" closer, it would have been so much better.

 

The last pic shows the sump connection (the last large piece of spa flex has been shortened to just a few inches in that pic)

 

Yeah, this took a few trips to lowe's.

 

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this is your FW tank? what made you put that true union there?

 

 

Yeah it is for my African cichlid tank. You probably assumed it was fresh water due to the bio-wheel. I'm going to start a thread about bio-wheels and marine misnomers soon. Keep tuned.

 

 

I put the union there for lots of reasons:

 

1) I could not get the assembly in place without it. The tank is 5" from the wall, full of water/rocks, and that bottom rigid part

sticks out like 18". I could barely get it in place using the union.

2) I always try to have at least one union in my plumbing so I can get the thing apart more easily.

3) It makes the plumbing look bigger, bulkier, uglier, more complicated.

4) It let me sniff more PVC cement fumes.

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That's not ugly, Sam, that's just planning for the future. Although, I have to comment on the liberal use of purple primer.

 

Now, what Tim posted, that's ugly. LOL.

 

I'll have to remember this thread tonight and post pics of what I had to do recently with the condensate drain coming off of my central air unit at home. Too cheap to rebuild it, I spliced it together (after having cut it open to find a blockage) with some 1" vinyl hose....

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That's not ugly, Sam, that's just planning for the future. Although, I have to comment on the liberal use of purple primer.

 

No kidding, that is some hard core purple!

 

I like how you have the little chunk of flex tube in there, that keeps the entire thing from being rigid and gives it a little bit of play. That is what I was doing with the 3 short pieces of spa flex.

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The real miracle was your survival of gluing up pipes on the hardwood floors. I surprise that your wife let you live long enough to make the post.

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The real miracle was your survival of gluing up pipes on the hardwood floors. I surprise that your wife let you live long enough to make the post.

 

 

Hey, I put a piece of cardboard down :) I even put a plastic bag down...until I realized the solvent melted it.

 

No wife here...now we know why. Well, one of the reasons why :)

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I'm almost embarrassed to even think I could compete with these submissions. Not only do we have ugly, we now have dangerous, too.

 

Here's the picture of the condensate drain line that I had to cut into this summer. It was clogged and I came home to water on the floor of the basement. I was unable to run a snake through, so I cut into it and, rather than cementing back together, cut some vinyl hose, slipping it over the cuts and joining the pipe back together. This picture shows three of the four cuts that were made and pieced back together this way.

 

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its not plumbing but its ugly and dangerous to boot

 

Upping the ante, eh! I feel challenged, now...

 

 

 

Tom: When I had my A/C installed, they put a cleanout in the condensate drain. They said to pour some bleach in it every couple years to keep bacterial slime from clogging it. they also installed the whole unit in a metal pan that fills up with water and a float switch turns it off if it gets full...some ideas to look into?

 

tim

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Tom: When I had my A/C installed, they put a cleanout in the condensate drain. They said to pour some bleach in it every couple years to keep bacterial slime from clogging it. they also installed the whole unit in a metal pan that fills up with water and a float switch turns it off if it gets full...some ideas to look into?tim

Good ideas. Mine was just a quick and dirty solution to get stop the condensate from dripping everywhere. Because the drain was clogged, the overflow came from inside the air handler. Of course, now I have a cleanout of sorts. I just take the whole thing apart and scrub it clean in sections. That block of white seen just below the trap just happens to be a condensate pump left over from last Fall's installation of an on-demand water heater in the house.

 

Let me get in on this:post-2631791-128321466287_thumb.jpg

 

Come on now, John. That's a pretty installation. Nice skimmer, too. A GSA Standard 12? I notice that you have the Avast neck cleaner installed, but the neck still looks pretty brown in the photo. What's with that? Is it just shadow?

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A little advice to some of you, don't quit your day job!

HA

tongue.gif

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Doug, there's ugly and there's Rube Goldberg-esque. I'm sure a lot of planning went into it. :biggrin:

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(edited)

i hope you guys have labeled all those pipes lol

 

 

They come labeled from the hardware store! (1/2", carolina pipe, etc)

 

Davelin: post up your pic of that crazy manifold...you know you want to.

 

Doug: Nice one! Reminds me of something Dr. Seuss would make.

Edited by extreme_tooth_decay
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Davelin: post up your pic of that crazy manifold...you know you want to.

 

 

Ooh, yes. I've seen it. I even patterned my manifold after his (mine's inverted, though). Maybe I should post a pic?

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